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Sunday, September 12, 2010

Savape and the Avian Style Meme

I actually have five new comics in my sketchbook, I just haven't scanned them yet. On a more productive note, I've started using Blogger's pages function to put up some introductory info about this blog as well as a blogroll.

Those of you who follow me on Deviant ART have probably seen this before. I meant to put it up here as well, but didn't do it until now. The original template is by lizkay.

I originally wanted to use a dromaeosaurid for this, but decided to use Savape: close enough in anatomy, but (probably) lying on the avian* fork in the maniraptor family tree.

Either way, combining the traits of a cartoony basal bird and pop culture caricatures of modern birds was fun to do. I had to cope with Savape's visible wing claws, long tail, retractable toe, and lack of an alula, tertials, or beak, for instance.
Personal - Savape (and nearly all the other characters in Raptormaniacs) was drawn using minimal references. As cartoony as my drawings are, I usually still use references to get the basics done, but with Raptormaniacs being even less serious than usual I just drew my own perception of each character.
Marahute - This one turned out well; a lot better than I anticipated. It was the first one other than the personal style I drew, so I wasn't sure if I was any good at this.Pokemon - I used Fearow as a base for this one, as its build and general personality are more in line with Savape's.
Jeremy - I found it hard to get good full-body shots of Jeremy, and a lot of his images showed him being comically tied up in string. Appropriate for him, perhaps, but not for the generally more dignified Savape. Fortunately, I discovered a nice picture of him standing guard on a wooden post.
Kehaar - I really like this one. Perhaps it's that Kehaar's aggressive streak fits and so the rest just caught on; I don't really know.Quest for Camelot - It wasn't too hard to compensate for the differences between Savape and modern birds, a six-limbed partly mammalian gryphon was trouble. So I just did the head. Besides, I couldn't find full-body shots for this one.

Asterix - I don't know anything about this web comic, but I just went with what I had. I used mainly the rooster as a base because the body shape fits better, even though Savape is female.Family Guy - I also happen not to know anything about this show, either, perhaps surprisingly. I don't watch much television. That weird fight with the chicken I watched on Youtube (to get some inkling of what I was supposed to be drawing) was more random than Freakazoid!, so I wasn't exactly impressed, although I won't judge on the basis of that one clip. Either way, I think I did okay with this one.

For the Birds - Couldn't really do much with this. The Pixar birds are just round things with eyes and beaks, so I responded in kind. Not that it's a bad thing; I love Pixar as much as everyone else.
Iago - Yikes, toothy neornithines and feather fingers really freak me out. I was extremely bothered by feather fingers when I was younger, so I blatantly avoided this trope as much as I could. Whenever I wanted to draw a neornithine holding something I would always have it use its feet or beak. That still holds true today. Luckily, Savape is able to circumvent these pet peeves of mine. As an Archaeopteryx lithographica, she naturally has teeth as well as functional fingers.

The Animals of Farthing Wood - I found a good image of the shrike and used that. Savape is rather predacious. Wouldn't put it past her to impale her victims on thorns or some such.

Griff - No full body shot again, but being a gryphon character that's no handicap. I only needed the head.

*That's Aves, semi-broadly defined. Some authorities use the narrower Aves which includes only modern birds and anything descended from their last common ancestor. Following this usage Archaeopteryx lithographica isn't an avian, although it's still (probably) closer to modern birds than to dromaeosaurids.